


Skin from the Muscle

by shelter



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Amnesty, Battle for Azeroth, Guerrilla Warfare, Multi, Nathanos's POV, Political Marriage, Post Fourth War, Pre Shadows Rising, Undeath, being hunted down, loyalty over honour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24177664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shelter/pseuds/shelter
Summary: Post-Fourth War. The next time Sylvanas Windrunner meets Jaina Proudmoore face-to-face, Nathanos cannot take his eyes off the tiny flowers falling onto the Dark Lady's hood.
Relationships: Jaina Proudmoore/Sylvanas Windrunner, Nathanos Blightcaller/Sylvanas Windrunner
Comments: 22
Kudos: 111





	Skin from the Muscle

**Author's Note:**

> This story fills in the gap after Sylvanas's Mak'Gora with Saurfang and the beginning of the upcoming novel 'Shadows Rising'. 
> 
> Also: I took up a challenge to do a Jaina/Sylvanas fic from Nathanos Blightcaller's perspective.

* * *

_"But, Commander of the Faithful, there is a proverb that says, 'the more one has, the more one wants'."_  
\- **A Thousand and One Nights**

* * *

* * *

When Jaina Proudmoore slaps the Dark Lady, Sylvanas Windrunner, with the open blade of her hand, Nathanos Blightcaller nearly lets his arrow loose.

In his mind's eye, his arrow would've blown Proudmoore's right ear off: a strike intended to scar, not assassinate – to distract, not kill. It would give enough time for the Dark Lady to deal the finishing blow while he saw to any further hostiles. This was the strategy they'd agreed on.

But now, he holds his arrow ready in the bow, string pulled so taut he thinks his weapon might snap. He doesn't fire because the Banshee Queen is – smiling. She turns the other cheek. And because he doesn't fire, neither do any of the Dark Rangers stationed with him in the trees.

They are in a clearing somewhere in the forests northwest of Orgrimmar. In the glade below, in between the skeletal arms of almost-dead trees, three of Azeroth's most important individuals – and Baine Bloodhoof – are meeting in secret. Overshadowed by a huge tree, King Anduin Wrynn and Proudmoore face the Tauren Chieftain and the Dark Lady.

Hidden in the trees, Dark Rangers aim their bows any target that isn't the Dark Lady.

Nathanos can't hear what they're discussing. But he knows Baine organised this small summit. In secret. He thinks its purpose is diplomatic, probably anything between an official pardon to surrender.

Now, Proudmoore and the King raise their voices. Baine's hand floats in the air between them. He neither stands with the Dark Lady or these two Alliance leaders. Sylvanas responds. But her hood obscures her lips. All Nathanos can do is aim at Proudmoore's temple, with one eye on the Dark Lady's occasional ear-flicks of discontent.

The staff in Proudmoore's hand begins to glimmer with arcane magic. In a move even he thinks is out of line, the archmage stabs a finger into the Dark Lady's chest. Even King Wrynn can't stop her.

"Lord Nathanos?" the Dark Ranger beside him asks, the stale air of anxiety soaking her voice.

"No."

His arm begins to cramp from holding his weapon primed. Baine looks like he's going to bash his head into a tree.

Then, the Dark Lady catches Proudmoore's finger as it falls again. Everyone freezes. Nathanos takes in a deep breath, the last final step before release. Something causes him to hesitate. Perhaps it's the dull strain crawling through his wasted muscles, forced into firing position for too long.

The next thing he sees is the Dark Lady holding Proudmoore's captured hand at her chest, like the folded wings of a bird. They stare each other down.

Wind shifts the trees. A spear of sunlight falls over the two of them.

They remain in this position, statuesque, longer than Nathanos is comfortable with.

They talk so softly that even King Wrynn has to move closer. A pause, and the Dark Lady releases the offending hand. Proudmoore withdraws.

More words, and now they're backing away. King Wrynn, the young lion cub masquerading as a monarch, pulls Proudmoore by the arm. She doesn't lower her stare from the Dark Lady's eyes until she's obliged to assemble a portal. Even then, before they pass through, she doesn't let her gaze fall from Sylvanas.

Sylvanas only directs her attention elsewhere a full moment after the portal closes. The first place she looks is up – right at him. Nathanos still has the arrow ready in his bow. He locks eyes with her. He sees the slight discoloration where Proudmoore hit her, the bloody vertical hyphen of a scar across her eye where Saurfang struck with the young king's blade.

She nods.

"Move out," Nathanos orders his troops.

* * *

Later, Nathanos sits with Dark Ranger Anya and Sira Moonwarden at camp. Night crowds around them, the forest claustrophobic. So he looks up, the sky a dark vault sprinkled with crystal stars.

There are just two dozen loyalists left. Nathanos has assigned all of them duties to watch, prowl, and sow disinformation. He knows out there, in the quivering night, their enemies hunt them: Lor'themar's Farstriders and, worse, the Night Warrior's Sentinels.

"What do you think?" Anya asks.

"About today?"

"Sanctuary. She's asking for sanctuary," says Sira.

"The Dark Lady doesn't like to show she's weak."

"We're being hunted by everyone. Nothing weak about getting a small reprieve."

"You think the king of puppies is going to give us one?"

"No. Maybe Baine will."

"Huh."

"Lord Nathanos?"

He can't feel it, but it's so cold that every time Anya talks, steam tusks from her mouth. If not for that, he can barely see her in the dark.

"The Dark Lady knows what she's doing," he says.

"You had a clean shot at the Proudmoore girl today –"

"She's got a lot of nerve –" adds Sira.

" –And you didn't take it!"

He doesn't need to justify who he kills or doesn't kill for his Queen. He stretches his arms in response to Anya, the limb is still haunted by the muscle memory of holding his arrow ready for so long. He knows he did the right thing, the sore flesh in shoulders notwithstanding.

When Sylvanas calls him into her presence, he follows the only light in the crushing darkness of the forest to her side. He ordered the Rangers to refrain from fires – too risky to give away their position – and only the Dark Lady is exempted from the field discipline he expects them to uphold.

Just one Dark Ranger standing guard, the Dark Lady writes by in the serene halo of candlelight. Orders, bribes, and letters – all labelled. He will courier them immediately. She asks about troop strength. He answers her honestly. Maybe more loyalists will straggle in soon, if they're not picked off by their enemies first.

"Leave us," she orders her guard. And it's just the two of them now.

Nathanos remembers the Dark Lady's study in Orgrimmar: the lush sheen of oak tables, lights powered by goblin technology and the elaborate Horde messenger system. Now it's just a crude approximation of a writing platform, under a bowing tree, in the dark.

The Banshee Queen has a rooster tail of dirt on her cloak. Splashes of mud scar her boots.

But there's a purity about this, he thinks. Just like their old Ranger days out in the field. No fancy politics. No ornate palaces. Just the land and their bodies in the service of war.

The Dark Lady stands. Shadows amass at her back. She stands close – so close her shallow breath is feathery against his cheek.

"My champion, do you l –"

"Yes."

"Let me finish," she says. "Do you trust me?"

"Yes, my Lady."

"You trust me, even with what I'm doing? With the little king and Jaina Proudmoore."

"You know my answer."

Nathanos never has doubts. His Dark Lady doesn't need his understanding. She needs his obedience.

She steps back. With her fingers she kills the light. All Nathanos sees now are her eyes. Crimson like day-old blood. Crimson like bruised roses.

* * *

The next time Sylvanas meets Jaina Proudmoore face-to-face in the forest, Nathanos cannot take his eyes off the tiny flowers falling onto the Dark Lady's hood.

The two ladies talk privately in a shaded forest hollow, under a tree exploding with flowers. Just beyond, screened by a corpse of shrubs, Nathanos knows Proudmoore's security retinue waits with a group of Dark Rangers.

The Dark Lady stands at the position Nathanos agreed on, her back facing him. Proudmoore's face hovers at the top of her shoulder, in the direct range of either his or Anya's arrows. This time, he aims at the bright target that is the archamge's forehead.

Again, he can't see what the Dark Lady's saying. Just the heft of her shoulders, or twitch of her ears under that hood studded with small falling flowers. They stand in a blush of spring sunshine. The dew in the grass makes it look as if they're surrounded by shattered glass.

His arrow waits, focused on the small ridge in between Proudmoore's eyes. The two ladies in the hollow share a laugh. Whatever joke passed between them makes the Dark Lady's shoulders shake with laughter. He thinks it's the first time since the Mak'Gora with Saurfang that she's relaxed.

It disturbs him. He watches, his aim drooping – straining to catch whatever they're saying – But, nothing.

There's a moment where both of them are silent. Proudmoore looks away. The Dark Lady tilts her head to the right. She says something that makes Proudmoore blush –

And then they're hugging.

Nathanos can't believe what he's seeing: a one-armed hug, Proudmoore's arm, sheathed in white, curling across the Dark Lady's shoulders.

As Proudmoore face's levels with Sylvanas's, she stares – straight at him. A cold stare. Straight through the forest at him. He can't tell if she can actually see him. But years of Ranger training has conditioned him to go completely still. In Proudmoore's face, he sees everything: rage, resentment, resolve, hatred –

They break the embrace. He exhales, his arrow still ready. More words he can't hear.

Before Proudmoore turns and walks away, she plucks the fallen flowers from the Dark Lady's hood. Nathanos observes, tracing the movements of the archmage's hand so close to his commander's face. But he feels something inside him twist with discomfort. He feels like an intruder, viewing something meant only for an audience of two.

He doesn't lower his bow until the arcane magic saturating the air from the archmage's portal dissipates. By then, the other Dark Rangers return to the hollow. They gather around her, a flock of her most loyal killers, pink petals pooling at their feet.

He wants to break his cover to join them. But all he sees is his Queen's back: her hunched shoulders under a ragged cloak.

* * *

"You're not bothered by it?"

"What?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

Nathanos prefers to carve arrow shafts the traditional way, stripping the bark from saplings until he has them thin enough for his liking. The Dark Rangers, accustomed to plundering the enemy for ammunition in undeath and dependent on juniors in life for equipment, sit around him curiously whenever he does this.

Now, on the run from multiple pursuers, he teaches them by example. He messes up his fingers with all the flexing and carving. But though he hasn't done this in years, his muscles remember, and from the years of experience as a Ranger himself guide his strokes.

"I would've put an arrow through her pretty face," says Anya.

"There's a time to kill and not to kill," he tells her.

"Spoken like a true Ranger Lord!"

Another Dark Ranger: "A Ranger Lord who makes his own arrows!"

The sunset leaking sun into the forest, he straightens the shafts through the single candle they have, borrowed from the Dark Lady when she's not using it. He makes the nock for the string, fetches the shaft with feathers from some unfortunate bird. He sources arrowheads from whatever's available. Rocks sharpened to points. A fragment of chipped blade from one of Sira Moonwarden's knife fans. A shard of iron from a broken button his cloak.

"You can imagine them making out in some quiet part of the forest –"

He accidentally scrapes the festering skin off his finger when he hears this. The pain burns. It's one of last few physical sensations he can still feel. He stabs the arrow shaft he's working on into the ground.

"You have a point to make to me, Anya?" he asks.

"The Dark Lady ditched the Horde, and now she courts the person who was our greatest foe?"

"Is your loyalty to our Queen wavering?"

"No, it's just –"

"Or you think my loyalty is suspect?"

He beheads an arrow shaft with the downward force of the blade. Anya stiffens.

"What's all this talk about loyalty?"

The Dark Lady walks into their small gathering, shadows dissolving in her wake. Nathanos sees the Dark Rangers stand at attention. Even Sira sits up straight in all her armour.

He picks up another sapling and continues to carve.

Sylvanas lowers herself to her haunches. She observes the pile of arrows he's made, picks one up and tests the tensile strength of the shaft. Her fingers flirt with the arrowhead on the most recent arrow he's made, the one with the jagged piece of broken button.

"A long time ago, in Quel'Thalas," the Dark Lady says. "The first human Ranger in the Farstriders made a quiver full of arrows for me as his a gift."

Nathanos pauses. The memory returns: he's sharpening saplings, polishing the edges of troll bones for arrowheads. He remembers a quiver full of arrows so meticulously prepared by hand that no one – no one but her – believed he had made them without magic.

"Arrows so uniform, they were like soldiers. Arrows so sharp they came out from flesh in a red mist."

"But you never used them," he says.

"Some weapons you keep because they're weapons of deterrence."

She picks up the arrow, runs her fingers down the iron chip at its head.

"I know you have many questions," she says, addressing the crowd now. "All your questions will be answered in due time."

As she says this, she gives a sideward glance to Anya, who nods in return.

"I must ask for your trust a little longer. Bear with me. You're the only family I have now."

There's something in the lift of her voice that Nathanos thinks isn't there before. As she speaks, she aims the end of the arrow at his face. Nathanos feels a tickle, the faintest brush of feathers on the ruined stubble of his chin. He feels the gentle force prompting his head upwards. And again, her eyes fill his vision. Crimson like bloodshed. Crimson like punctured flesh.

"Trust me."

She utters it as if it's a statement of fact, not a question.

"We all do, my Lady."

When she leaves to give instructions to another group of her Dark Rangers, Anya catches his eye, and mocks fainting. She whispers something he can't fully hear, save for the words, "Make your move."

Even Sira has the nerve to clap him on the shoulder.

When he returns to his carving, he realises the Dark Lady took his arrow.

* * *

Sometime before dawn, just as the sky takes the colour of putrid flesh, two Dark Rangers seek him out.

"We have a straggler," one of them says.

"Caught in the woods about kilometre east of our position," the other adds.

"But you might want to deal with this one before the Dark Lady knows."

They lead him away from the camp, to where Sira stands with her weapons drawn. There, backed into a tree, with an arrow sticking out of the bell of her hip, lounges the slouching figure of Delayrn Summermoon.

"Lord Nathanos," she says, with considerable pain.

"Ah what an unfortunate manner of meeting you again."

"I come to pledge my loyalty –"

"It took you a while."

"The Dark Lady isn't easy to find."

"And I'm sure you're not alone."

"No. Please! I'm not spying!" she looks to Sira. "You have to believe me."

His senses blunt, the dark forest obscures exactly how wounded Summermoon is. But he can still sense the high-pitch, the tremor of her voice. Her body leans towards her injury, and that black mass of fetid substance soaking her clothes tells him all he needs to know.

He takes out an arrow and pulls it taunt, the arrowhead an arm's length from Summermoon's forehead. She tries to flinch, but the Dark Rangers hold her in place.

"If I put this in your head," he says, "how many of your former comrades will spring from the forest?"

"No – please! Wait, please! Don't –"

"Start talking."

"We're confused. We all are. We don't know who will protect us!" she says. "Some have sought out Calia Menethil. Others have gone back to Horde. And then there are the rumours –"

"What rumours?"

"That the Dark Lady will be in an arranged union with Jaina Proudmoore in return for a general pardon for all of us."

Nathanos doesn't lower his aim. The others turn to him, questioning. He should put this whimpering, failed experiment out of her misery –

When Summermoon looks at up him, he sees her as he did on Darkshore: a crushed shell, pierced by so many arrows she looked like a porcupine. He sees the blanched, ruined skin, separating from the muscle, as her body rose in undeath. He sees the look of recognition, the horror of being conscious and shambling into allegiance to a former enemy, yet without even a facsimile of control over one's choices.

Hunted, cornered and powerless. He empathises, especially now.

Nathanos puts down his bow. If there's one feeling that still stirs within him, it's the ability to calculate the difference between mercy –

And purpose.

"Gag her. Bring her back to where you found her," he tells the Dark Rangers. "Secure her to a tree. Then rig the surroundings with our remaining Blight."

Before Summermoon can scream, the Dark Rangers put a hood over her head. The muffled noise of choking subsides, slowly, surely, while they drag her back to the forest. Nathanos watches them depart. He watches until the rushing dawn torches the forest – until he knows it's time to leave.

* * *

Nathanos hears the crashing through the undergrowth and the shouting of Darnassian commands – a chamber of noise surrounding him. He makes a split-second decision – unleashing an arrow straight through a Kaldorei Ranger's throat – and turns to face the Sentinel bounding towards him –

The forest has gone to hell – ambush – Sentinels everywhere.

He's in the process of reaching for another arrow when the Sentinel's glaive shreds his right tricep. His own blood spews into his face.

"Blightcaller!"

He hears the Dark Lady's curdling Banshee wail. Like fingers squeezing his heart, it forces him to his feet to meet the Sentinel head-on. His entire right arm cramps as he clenches his blade. Swipe after swipe, his enemy parries.

Briefly, the melee dredges up a maniac memory: fighting tooth and claw, tongue to flesh, scraps of skin under his fingernails, the decay overpowering –

The sentinel charges at him. This time he deflects the glaive with his blade, stabs her through the wrist with an arrow. She drops the glaive. He seizes it, buries it in her chest.

A screeching yell: "Fall back to me!"

"Defend the Dark Lady!" he orders.

Sylvanas's voice echoes ahead. She purges their enemies in a whirlpool of black mist, as they scramble through a forest knifed with sunbeams.

He dashes past arrows bursting into the trees. En route to Sylvanas, he picks up a Dark Ranger with an arrow lodged in her jaw, chunks of flesh and gums dangling over his hands.

"I – will – hold – them," she says, pushing him away. "For the Dark Lady!"

"You're no use to her dead." So he drags her with him.

He rallies what's left of the loyalists. With some providing cover, they retreat to where the Dark Lady leads –

To where the forest ends and the ocean confronts them.

* * *

There's a brief bubble of respite as everyone collects themselves. He drops the Dark Ranger he rescued in the sand. After weeks of hiding in the forest, the slap of sea breeze against his face feels like a reward - if the situation were not so dire.

Sylvanas walks out to the edge where land meets sea, a lone dark figure outlined by the rolling fortress of foam. Then, he sees it: a ship anchored offshore, the symbol on its flag blurred by heat. A launch approaches the beach.

Nathanos looks at the others, forming up a last stand on the sloping beach crumbling into the sea. He approaches Sylvanas. Blood slithers from his torn arm, a snake of black trailing behind him in the sand.

"My Lady, there's no way off this beach."

"That's our way out." She nods at the launch crawling towards them. She doesn't take her eyes off it.

She offers no explanation. He doesn't need one.

"I'll hold them off until our reinforcements arrive," he says.

"Nonsense. _We'll_ hold them off."

Her arrows infused with dark magic, she fires on Sentinels stalking them from the cover of the forest, sinking them in smoke. He stands at her shoulder, covering her, while Sira and the rest of Dark Rangers they form a barricade around them with their bodies.

The launch arrives. A party of armed men stalk up the beach, deliberately oblivious to the tangled mass of dead and dying on the beach.

The commander, his face a sunburnt fist, wears a uniform with an anchor emblem on his shoulder epaulettes.

"Dark Lady," the commander says, making the words a masterpiece of disgust.

"About time," she responds.

"We were told to retrieve you and you alone. No passengers."

"My rangers are following me."

"Take this up with your f – the Lord Admiral herself." Then, he adds with the slightest hint of pleasure. "You're in no position to negotiate."

"I will –"

A volley of arrows lands in between them. A Dark Ranger falls, and several of the commander's men are struck. Nathanos pulls Sylvanas aside as another flies into the space between them.

"Your choice, commander. Or we'll all die on this beach."

"Two. You and another. That's it. Or the launch will be overloaded," he says.

"We'll return for the rest."

With the arrows raining around them, Nathanos watches the commander loading his wounded. He stares at Sylvanas, who's running out of arrows. There, with his arm burning with pain, he decides.

"Anya," he calls. "Escort the Dark Lady to the ship."

Sylvanas scowls. She lets her bowstave dangle on her arm. She clenches a gauntleted fist, the sound of metal clasping flesh like a question that she doesn't want to say.

She closes the distance to him. For Nathanos, it's been a long time since they've been this close. Now, on this graveyard of a beach, there's no torque of reassuring warmth or cloying perfume from her. But even in undeath, Nathanos picks up the sour pheromones of sweat and adrenaline. The scarred tears on her face are speckled with droplets of ocean spray.

She touches his injured arm, then his face. Her fingers leave a crescent smear of his own blood on his cheek.

"Stay alive."

Not a plea. But a command.

And then she's gone. Anya follows, limping.

A groan of wood, the slapping of oars. The beach goes silent save the cries of the wounded, shouts in Darlassian from the forest and the snarl of yet-unseen saber cats.

Nathanos looks at those with him: less than a dozen, including Sira, all nursing injuries. He drops to a knee, spreads his arrows before him and strings one.

"We will hold this beach for the Dark Lady," he says.

No one says anything. Just the grunting of his comrades trying to silence their pain. The sea sighs. The tide scraps away the sand around them, feeding their position to the hungry waves. With arrow in place, the pressure on his arm inflates, leaving the rest of Nathanos's right tricep to disintegrate into a morass of flaking skin and muscle.

He thinks of the disappearing launch, the shadows seeping from the beach, his blood oozing into the sand – such a disappointing end. The only thing holding him back is his belief that perhaps – perhaps – he'll see his Queen again.

He releases his arrow.

* * *

After he ensures his Dark Rangers are taken care of and he's not bleeding, naval officers escort him to Sylvanas.

It's been a crazy few weeks. From Orgrimmar at the height of the coup, to fighting in the forest with only the Dark Lady's most loyal followers to – wherever he is now. With the wood-panelled walls, coral-stone embedded in the pillars and the oily, fish-tinged breeze, Nathanos guesses he's been evacuated to Boralus.

The launch returned before they were overwhelmed. But what's he doing here? Everything about his – their – presence here is wrong.

His minders keep their distance, treating him with the kind of reticence one would an exotic animal. They deposit him outside a door without further directions, so he pulls it open and goes inside.

He enters a garden, swamped in the angular, harsh light of sunset. The view overlooks a port, its waters rainbowed by a sheen of pollution. Seagulls scream. A storm broods far on the horizon.

This shelf of a garden ends in a balcony, where Sylvanas and Jaina Proudmoore stand beside by side, looking out over the scenery. The archmage leans on the rails, observing the ramparts. The Dark Lady stands, arms crossed over her chest.

They're in mid-conversation when he clears his throat.

Something crosses Sylvanas's face – relief maybe, or happiness – but it quickly settles. She gives him the faintest of smiles, lips curling to flash the whites of her fangs.

Beside her, Proudmoore looks as if she's lost the flagship frigate of her navy. She, too, recovers fast, and returns to staring out at the scenery.

The Dark Lady steps to him, places her hands on his shoulders. Nathanos thinks she's going in for an embrace, but she doesn't. Instead, her two heavily-armoured gauntlets roost on his shoulders. She cocks her head. Her ears flick.

All these actions, he thinks, are not gestures of endearment, but possession.

"How fare the others?"

"Anya is stitching them up. We're down to ten. But we await your orders."

"Good."

"My Lady, forgive my directness but – what's going on?"

Nathanos sees the evasive-ness of her eyes, looking at the point below his right shoulder. She turns her head, nods to the other woman by the ledge, who's watching the port forlornly like a discarded flower.

"The Lord Admiral and I have decided to come together in a – domestic arrangement," she says. "For our mutual benefit."

He nods.

"Exact terms are still being discussed. But for now, we have amnesty in her port city."

There are so many questions. But before they flood the conversation, she puts a finger to his lips.

"I have a mission for you."

"What's your wish?" Then he adds, "Let it be my wedding gift for you."

He still knows the exact words to make her smile.

"Take Sira Moonwarden with you and go to –"

As she speaks, one of her fingers traces the hardened grooves of thread that bind his shredded arm together. The straying touch over the putrid, blackened flesh causes him to flinch, the muscles to twitch reflexively –

But beyond her words and the shaking of his arm, he stares at Jaina Proudmoore on the ledge. She looks back, with her face half-turned. The setting sun makes her white hair incandescent, and her glare contains all the gale-force of envy – a glare that says, I know you, I know your thoughts.

"Nathanos," Sylvanas says. Then deeper, with the barest bass of her banshee voice. "My Champion."

"Yes – sorry. I'm –"

"I know."

Her fingers rest on the deepest of his wounds. She applies pressure, and wispy shadows prick at the edges where his skin has been sewn together. The shadows appear to massage his muscles within, and he flexes involuntarily.

"She may have my heart," Sylvanas says, in the lowest of voices. "But remember, you have my back."

He withdraws from her touch. The sting of pain returns to his arm, and he thinks it will begin to cramp. Still, he flexes again. Black smoke puffs from where his muscles clench.

"Safe Journey," Sylvanas says.

She mouths something after. But Nathanos can't hear it.

Instead his eyes are drawn to the long shadow cast by Proudmoore's figure, a totem of grey that stretches across the ground, swallowing the Dark Lady where she stands.

Before he sets out on the inevitable, he looks at Sylvanas's face again. It might be the last time he sees her. As if to confirm this, her crimson eyes meet his. Crimson like the withering core of a furnace. Crimson like the dying glow of the sunset before him.

.

.

.

_END_

**Author's Note:**

> From a first time WoW writer, thank you for reading!
> 
> Since this is written from Nathanos's perspective, the entire full picture of Sylvanas and Jaina's relationship is incomplete. Imagine seeing your commander and an enemy hook-up: it doesn't look like a celebration, but a bargain with the devil. 
> 
> I'm not a fan of Nathanos, but writing his devotion to his Banshee Queen was an exercise in empathy. The line between romantic love and loyalty is something very, very thin in the field: you don't fall in love with your commanding officer, but you'e willing to kill, die and do terrible things for her. Some people view that as affection. Some view it as the highest form of faith. It depends.
> 
> Let me know your thoughts!


End file.
